Professional Services Roles at GitLab

Professional Services Engineers

To learn more, see the Professional Services Engineer handbook

Professional Services Engineers engage with customers to provide installation, migration, training, and advisory services. They handle installations ranging from single-node Omnibus installs, to our largest reference architectures utilizing IaC/CaC, migrations from multiple systems to GitLab SaaS or self-hosted, and advisory services across the entire GitLab feature stack.

Professional Services Engineers are expected to be able to interface not only with the customer, but with our GitLab engineering teams, to find the best route for customer success, and to help drive improvements into GitLab features and processes.

Unless otherwise specified, all Professional Service Engineering roles at GitLab share the following requirements and responsibilities:

Requirements

• Professional experience with one or more IaC/CaC technologies:
  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Packer
  • Puppet
  • Chef
• Professional experience with one or more cloud providers:
  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Azure
• Proficiency in the English language, both written and verbal, sufficient for success in a remote and largely asynchronous work environment
• Demonstrated capacity to clearly and concisely communicate about complex technical, architectural, and/or organizational problems and propose thorough iterative solutions
• Experience using, deploying, and configuring GitLab
• Comfort working in a fast-paced environment, sometimes with multiple customer engagements at once
• Positive disposition and solution-oriented mindset
• Ability to advise customers on our recommendations, and build direction/consensus with the customer to move forward
• Effective communication skills: Regularly achieve consensus with peers, and clear status updates
• Self-motivated and self-managing, with strong organizational skills
• Share our values, and work in accordance with those values
• Ability to thrive in a fully remote organization

Senior Professional Services Engineer Requirements

Extends the general requirements with the following:

• Proven ability to manage a solo project or projects
• Proven ability to lead other Professional Services engineers on a project or projects
• Proven ability to "think to the next question" and see the larger picture for customer engagements, and not just the individual task
• Proven ability to consider the business aspects of delivery

Additional Skills

• Development skills in Python, Ruby, or Go
• Long-term experience managing a GitLab installation, preferably with Premium or Ultimate license levels
• Experience with deploying in Kubernetes, deploying at scale, and managing large-scale applications
• Experience in a peak performance organization, preferably a tech startup
• Experience with the GitLab product as a user, contributor, or DevOps maintainer
• Experience working with a remote team
• Developer platform/tool industry experience
• Experience working with a global or otherwise multicultural team
• Computer science education or equivalent experience

Responsibilities

Customer Focus

• Represents GitLab and GitLab values in public communication around broader initiatives, specific projects, and community contributions
• Works with engagement leads to understand customer needs and metrics for success
• Works with engagement leads and the customer to navigate the customers environment to achieve success
• Communicates confidently with customers and peers in written and verbal communications

Solution Focus

• Uses a consultative approach to customer engagements. Does not just focus on "doing the work".
• Looks for opportunities to help the customer achieve their vision more effectively and efficiently. Communicates and documents those opportunities
• Utilizes previous technical experience, and specific knowledge on the GitLab environment, to deliver the technical aspects of the engagement
• Works with engagement leads to help the customer map out their DevOps transformation as it relates to GitLab and their tool chain

Operational Excellence

• Learns and adopts current Professional Services processes for engagements and suggests improvements
• Represent GitLab and its values in public communication around broader initiatives, specific projects, and community contributions.
• Supports engagement managers on quoting and scoping of SOWs
  • Delivers on SOW with guidance from technical architects and senior PS engineers. SOW scope may include:
  • Installation and configuration of GitLab solutions in the customer environment
  • Provide technical training sessions remotely and/or on-site
    • Junior Professional Service engineers will be shadowing, and not expected to deliver technical support/training
  • Provide documentation for implementation, guides, maintenance, etc relevant to the customer requirements.
  • Manage creation of new and/or maintenance of existing artifacts and templates for deliverables and training
  • Develop and implement migration plan for customer VCS & data migration
• Liaison with GitLab customer support team to diagnose and troubleshoot support cases when necessary
• Contribute to the extension and maintenance of documentation/scripts for implementation and workflow to align with custom requirements
• Travel required - 25%

Senior Professional Services Engineer Responsibilities

Extends the general responsibilities with the following:

• Proven knowledge and mastery with major cloud technologies and public cloud providers
• Mastery with multiple highly available architectures and concepts.
• Exert influence on the overall objectives and long-range goals of your team and Professional Services
• Provide mentorship for Junior and Intermediate Professional Services Engineers to help them grow in their technical responsibilities and remove blockers to their autonomy.
• Manage/oversee/deliver on multiple projects, either as the primary engineer, or as a lead providing oversight to other Professional Services engineers
• Continually work with Engagement Managers and Program Managers to streamline and improve delivery
• Provide feedback to make scheduled delivery more consistent

Professional Experience

At GitLab, due to the pace we're moving, people joining our team will be expected to have significant professional experience in the primary engineering tools of the specialty that they'll be joining. For Professional Services Engineers, this means work-experience using IaC/CaC technologies on one or more of the main cloud providers, as well as experience deploying, maintaining, and administering a GitLab instance

Job Grades

Read more about grades at GitLab here. As Professional Services falls under Customer Success, the specifc grades are here

Junior Professional Services Engineer

The Junior Professional Services Engineer reports to the Manager, Professional Services

Job Grade

The Junior Professional Services Engineer is a grade 5.

Intermediate Professional Services Engineer

The Professional Services Engineer (Intermediate) reports to the Manager, Professional Services.

Job Grade

The Intermediate Professional Services Engineer is a grade 6.

Senior Professional Services Engineer

The Senior Professional Services Engineer reports to the Manager, Professional Services.

Job Grade

The Senior Professional Services Engineer is a grade 7.

Professional Services Technical Instructor

Levels

Professional Services Techincal Instructor (Intermediate)

The Professional Services Techincal Instructor (Intermediate) reports the Manager, Professional Services Practice

Professional Services Technical Instructor (Intermediate) Job Grade

The Professional Services Technical Instructor (Intermediate) is a grade 6.

Professional Services Technical Instructor (Intermediate) Responsibilities

• Deliver live and asynchronous experiential instructional sessions that support adult learning best practices, address needs identified in a job/task analysis, drive behavior change, and improve the performance of GitLab customers and partners.
• Deliver excellent customer-service during training events including arriving and running training sessions punctually and professionally.
• Review customer feedback and collaborate with team members to continually improve the customer learning experience.
• Respond professionally and attentively to training session attendees to ensure they are satisfied with their learning experience.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with team members to plan and develop slides and labs for instructional sessions.
• Stay up to date with the latest GitLab feature releases and incorporate them into training deliveries.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for certification program design and assessment development.
• Meet all milestones and final deliverables by deadlines; when delays do occur, work with the team to estimate, monitor, adjust, and proactively communicate revised deadlines as needed

Professional Services Technical Instructor (Intermediate) Requirements

• Technical degree such as B.S. or M.S. or relevant work experience
• Demonstrated progressive experience delivering live technical training and labs on how to use SaaS development solutions
• Proficient with commonly-used coding languages and tools such as Python, Java, Docker, Kubernetes, YAML, Git, and Visual Studio
• Working knowledge of and experience with using GitLab throughout the concurrent devops life cycle
• Dynamic, engaging presentation style with strong presentation skills specifically in delivering complex technical training to a variety of audience types
• Passion for helping customers succeed and for exceeding customer expectations
• Knowledge of and experience with applying adult learning methods and practices
• Strong oral and written communication skills and diverse experience working with internal customers and stakeholders in both live and virtual environments
• Proven ability to clearly articulate complex concepts in simple terms
• Excellent team player
• Detail-oriented with strong project management skills and requiring minimal supervision
• Experience with virtual meeting/webinar tools such as Zoom
• Ability to travel 50% or more both within the United States and globally
• Experience working with a variety of Learning Management and Learning Experience Systems and various virtual meeting management tools such as Zoom is a plus
• Familiarity with statically generated websites are preferred, as we take a handbook-first approach to Sales and Customer Enablement
• Knowledge of the software development life cycle, DevOps, and/or open source software is preferred
• Ability to use GitLab

Senior Professional Services Technical Instructor

The Senior Professional Services Techincal Instructor reports the Manager, Professional Services Practice

Senior Professional Services Technical Instructor Responsibilities

• Extends that of the Professional Services Technical Instructor (Intermediate) Responsibilities

Senior Professional Services Technical Instructor Requirements

• Extends that of the Professional Services Technical Instructor (Intermediate) Requirements
• Demonstrated progressive experience
• Strong experience in both software development and technical training
• Has experience in previous technical senior roles

Professional Services Technical Architect

Levels

Technical Architect

Technical Architect Job Grade 

The Technical Architect is a grade 8.

Technical Architect Responsibilities

• Responsible for the application design, development and support of GitLab related Professional Services projects
• Demonstrate progressive leadership in the full life cycle of the software development environment
• Use of design documentation and best-practice methodologies to be responsible for the detailed design of Gitlab related projects from inception through production support
• Ensuring that the system accurately meets the defined expectations of the business unit, ensuring that proper testing is implemented and performance requirements are closely monitored by working with the development teams
• Knows and applies fundamental concepts, practices, and procedures of particular field of specialization, with awareness of related fields
• Coordinate and oversee functional implementation activities for internal and partner consultants, developers, and customer points of contact (POC) on large scale enterprise projects
• Mentor PS and Partner Consultants providing guidance regarding ‘Best Practice,’ communication, and implementation strategies
• Liaise with and support of other functional groups within GitLab – including (but not limited to) training, development, support, product, engineering
• Provide business use cases supporting product QA of new releases and short- and long-term objectives of the product roadmap
• Review and provide input to PS training materials and presentations
• Develop case studies, presentations, and internal process development
• Provide support to PS Engagment Managers during the scoping and creation of the customer statement of work (SOW)
• Lead the Discovery portion of the customer project working closely with the PSE team member assigned
• Work closely with the customer project team (specifically the Project Manager) to ensure accurate task-level articulation of the work required
• Stay up to date on new features, and fixes within the monthly GitLab product releases and disseminate key information to the PSE team

Technical Architect Requirements

• Bachelors Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science or other advanced technical degree
• Strong written and verbal communications
• Demonstrated progressive experience delivering consulting services
• Demonstrated progressive enterprise level software development experience
• Demonstrated progressive DevOps Platform experience
• Strong computer skills. Proficiency in Word, Excel and Power Point required. A working knowledge of core business systems preferred
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to focus and clarify concepts
• Demonstrated problem solving and decision-making abilities with effective organizational and time management skills; the ability to handle multiple projects and priorities effectively in a fast-paced environment with minimal supervision
• Strong organizational, multi-tasking and presentation skills. Ability to create momentum and foster organizational change
• You share our values, and work in accordance with those values.
• Leadership at GitLab
• Ability to use GitLab

Specialties

Read more about what a specialty is at GitLab.

Public Sector

Professional Services Engineer (Public Sector) Responsibilities

• Extends that of any level Professional Services Engineer responsibilities

Professional Services Engineer (Public Sector) Requirements

• Extends that of any level Professional Services Engineer requirements
• TS/SCI Security Clearance
• Knowledge of and demonstrated progressive experience with Public Sector customers
• Ability to travel if needed and comply with the company’s travel policy. Federal, LLC team members need to also comply with the applicable vaccination policies.

Manager, Professional Services (Public Sector)

Manager, Professional Services (Public Sector) Responsibilities

• Extends that of the Manager, Professional Services responsibilities

Manager, Professional Services (Public Sector) Requirements

• Extends that of the Manager, Professional Services requirements
• TS/SCI Security Clearance
• Knowledge of and demonstrated progressive experience with Public Sector customers

Embedded on-site engineer

Embedded on-site engineer Responsibilities

• Extends that of any level Professional Services Engineer responsibilities
• Embed on site with a customer for a period of 3, 6, or 12 months at a time
• Act as a GitLab evangelist onsite with customer's teams
• Identify pain points and issues with planning, development, test, compliance, security, build and orchestration processes.
• Assist GitLab customer support team to diagnose and troubleshoot support cases when necessary
• Help review processes and identify areas for improvement including the use of automation

Embedded on-site engineer Requirements

• Extends that of any level Professional Services Engineer requirements
• Presentation skills with a high degree of comfort speaking with executives, IT Management, and developers
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• High level of comfort communicating effectively across customer teams, groups or divisions
• Ideal candidates will preferably have demonstrated progressive IT industry or IT technical sales related experience
• Experience with modern development practices strongly preferred (Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, DevOps Pipelines (CI/CD), Application Security, Cloud providers)
• Experience with several of the following tools strongly preferred:
  • Ruby on Rails, Java, .Net, Python
  • Git, Bitbucket, GitHub, SVN
  • Jira, VersionOne, TFS
  • Jenkins, CircleCI
  • Veracode, Checkmarx, Black Duck
  • Artifactory, Nexus
  • New Relic, Nagios
  • mono-repo and distributed-repo approaches
  • BASH / Shell scripting

Regional Manager, Professional Services

The Regional Manager, Professional Services reports into the Director, Professional Services.

Regional Manager, Professional Services Job Grade 

The Regional Manager, Professional Services is a grade 9.

Regional Manager, Professional Services Responsibilities

• Work with the Professional Services Director to help establish and manage goals and responsibilities for Professional Services Engineers
• Assist in development of thought leadership, event-specific, and customer-facing presentations
• Share hands-on technical preparation and presentation work for key accounts helping sell on the value of what GitLab professional services has to offer
• Ensure the Professional Services Engineers exceeds corporate expectations in achieving billable utilization targets as well as core knowledge, communication, and execution
• Ensure the Professional Services Project Managers exceed expectations in completing projects successfully and meeting revenue targets
• Define and maintain a high bar for team member expectations and enable the team to achieve it
• Challenge the team and yourself to continually learn and grow as trusted advisors to clients
• Monitor performance of team members and provide timely feedback and development assistance
• Create, review, and approve formal statements of work, change requests, and proposals
• Prepare weekly revenue forecast worksheet and create action plans to address issues
• Manage resource assignments and staffing levels, including recruitment as needed
• Identify and implement improvements to the processes and tools used as a seasoned with experience leading teams of project managers and consultants in support of external customers
• Work together with our sales organization to propose, scope, and price professional services Statements of Work, including managing a PS sales overlay team
• Bring Professional Services team together with Solutions Architects and Technical Account Managers to plan and execute internal projects, ensure that teams have appropriate training and manage resources to deliver GitLab service offerings
• Provide leadership and guidance to coach, motivate and lead services team members to their optimum performance levels and career development
• Ensure delivery model is focused on quality, cost effective delivery of services, and customer success outcomes
• Remains knowledgeable and up-to-date on GitLab product releases
• Document services provided to customers, including new code, techniques, and processes, in such a way as to make such services more efficient in the future and to add to the GitLab community
• Work with the Product Engineering and Support teams, to contribute documentation for GitLab
• Help build programs that the TAMs and PSEs will execute to effectively grow our enterprise customers

Manager, Professional Services Requirements

All requirements for the Professional Services Engineer role apply to the Manager, Professional Services role, as the management role will need to understand and participate with the day-to-day aspects of the Professional Services Engineer role in addition to managing the team. Additional requirements include:

• Experienced in and with advanced insight to the GitLab platform
• Experienced in giving and received positive and constructive feedback
• Able to adapt to environmental change and retrospecting on success and failures
• Previous leadership experience is a plus
• Experienced in collaborating with other managers and executing strategies
• Proven track record in software/technology sales or consulting and management
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically about business, products, and technical challenges

Senior Manager, Professional Services

The Senior Manager, Professional Services reports into the Director, Professional Services.

Senior Manager, Professional Services Job Grade 

The Senior Manager, Professional Services is a grade 9.

Senior Manager, Professional Services Responsibilities

• Extends that of the Manager, Professional Services responsibilities
• Lead delivery of consulting, education and implementation services to our customers, overseeing resource management, project delivery and operational success metrics.
• Be accountable for services financial goals and metrics, including revenue, gross margin and utilization.
• Own operational metrics, such as time-to-value, customer satisfaction and on-time completion of projects.

Senior Manager, Professional Services Requirements

• Extends that of the Manager, Professional Services requirements
• Demonstrated progressive experience managing, leading and/or delivering professional services or customer success
• Demonstrated progressive experience with a subscription-based business model, delivering on-premises and SaaS solutions
• Experience managing technical, cross-functional professional services teams (e.g., consulting, implementation, trainers, project managers) and delivery partners

Career Ladder

The next steps for individual contributors is to move into a Manager role within this Job family or to the Professional Services Project Manager Job Family. The next steps for a Manager, Professional Services would be to move into a Senior Manager within this Job Family or to the Professional Services Engagment Job Family or the Director of Professional Services Job Family. The next steps for a Senior Manager, Professional Services would be the Professional Services Engagment Job Family or the Director of Professional Services Job Family.

Performance Indicators

• Billable utilization > 70%

Hiring Process

Candidates can expect the hiring process to follow the order below. Please keep in mind that candidates can be declined from the position at any stage of the process. To learn more about someone who may be conducting the interview, find their job title on our team page.

• Qualified candidates will first be screened by a Recruiter
• Next, qualified candidates may be asked to interview with the Hiring Manager
• Next, qualified candidates may be asked to interview with 2-4 Team members
• Finally, qualified candidates may be asked to interview with someone from the leadership team

Additional details about our process can be found on our hiring page.

Compensation

Compensation Calculator

About GitLab

GitLab Inc. is a company based on the GitLab open-source project. GitLab is a community project to which over 2,200 people worldwide have contributed. We are an active participant in this community, trying to serve its needs and lead by example. We have one vision: everyone can contribute to all digital content, and our mission is to change all creative work from read-only to read-write so that everyone can contribute.

We value results, transparency, sharing, freedom, efficiency, self-learning, frugality, collaboration, directness, kindness, diversity, inclusion and belonging, boring solutions, and quirkiness. If these values match your personality, work ethic, and personal goals, we encourage you to visit our primer to learn more. Open source is our culture, our way of life, our story, and what makes us truly unique.

Top 10 Reasons to Work for GitLab:

1. Mission: Everyone can contribute
2. Results: Fast growth, ambitious vision
3. Flexible Work Hours: Plan your day so you are there for other people & have time for personal interests
4. Transparency: Over 2,000 webpages in GitLab handbook, GitLab Unfiltered YouTube channel
5. Iteration: Empower people to be effective & have an impact, Merge Request rate, We dogfood our own product, Directly responsible individuals
6. Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging: A focus on gender parity, Team Member Resource Groups, other initiatives
7. Collaboration: Kindness, saying thanks, intentionally organize informal communication, no ego
8. Total Rewards: Competitive market rates for compensation, Equity compensation, global benefits (inclusive of office equipment)
9. Work/Life Harmony: Flexible workday, Friends and Family days
10. Remote Done Right: One of the world's largest all-remote companies, prolific inventor of remote best practices

See our culture page for more!